• frezik@midwest.social
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    8 days ago

    It’s exactly what happens, and we have about as good a natural experiment on this as it gets:

    https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/when-reindeer-paradise-turned-purgatory-0

    tl;dr: a Reindeer herd was setup on an uninhabited Alaskan island as a potential food source during WWII with no natural predators. The war ended before anything came of it, so the herd was left on its own. Within a few decades, they had stripped the island bare of all vegetation the deer could possibly reach, and then they all starved to death.

    Also, see predator reintroduction programs, such as how wolves change rivers.

    Elephants and rhinos don’t breed the same way a lot of other animals do. If they did, evolution would very quickly do what happened in Alaska to those deer. Animals like deer and rabbits breed in great numbers with the evolutionary expectation that predators will keep them in check.

    If you think this process is brutal, well, yes, it is. The conservative thing would be to say that this is “natural” and therefore the correct and only way to run human society. This is wrong; we can choose a better path for ourselves while also accepting that nature works this way all the time.

    • masquenox@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      tl;dr: a Reindeer herd

      So your eco-fash hottake can literally be disproven by the fact that elephants exist, yet you are so desperate to cling onto it that you try to peddle forcing deer into becoming an invasive species on an island they have never adapted to as proof?

          • frezik@midwest.social
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            7 days ago

            So because Elephants exist, Reindeer can go on without Predators? Dude, this is the most uncontaversial take in conservation. Predators are a necessary part of the cycle. That had nothing to do with how human society should run.

            • masquenox@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              Dude, this is the most uncontaversial take in conservation.

              So, again. Your Malthusian eco-fash hottake can literally be disproven by the simple fact that elephants exist. Animals can and will evolve to live within the means of their environments. Even humans have been thoroughly documented to be capable of such. So your pretensions that a “Reindeer Apocalypse” is imminent is… what, exactly?